Welcome back everyone to another episode to the Great Old Ones Gaming podcast, It’s me Nate riding solo for this episode. As you’ve no doubt seen by the title of this episode, I am here today to talk you all about one of my new favorite games, Alien the RPG.

Based on the beloved horror franchise of the same name, Free League’s Alien RPG was originally published back in late 2019, but like all gaming sessions, scheduling conflicts prevented me from playing until recently where I finally got to run a game for Vase and a couple of Patrons. With that game fresh in my mind, I wanted to focus today’s episode on the content in the core rule book and Starter set without going into spoilers so any potential players and GM’s alike could hear my mad ramblings and see if Alien is right for them.

image from https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/alien/?downloads

The Core book begins with a chapter on the Story and universe that Alien takes place in. Alien is a game about rough conditions, corporate dominance of everyday life, a galaxy rife with conflict between 3 major powers, and of course Xenomorphs. The slice-of-life sections about the major character archetypes are great and there is an excellent timeline of events detailing major events from the movies starting in (funny enough) 2023 and ending in 2180, shortly after the events of Alien 3.The book considers the two prequel movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant along with the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation (which is amazing and you should definitely play!) to be canon while disregarding the events of Alien: Resurrection. Say what you will about the movies but I think the absence of Resurrection makes sense. It’s inclusion wouldn’t add much to the story overall while the inclusion of the prequel movies adds more Xenotypes and the mystery of the Engineers for Game Mother’s to chew on.

Flipping through the pages of core rules, you encounter plenty of wonderful and evocative full-page art pieces that capture the dark grizzled tone of Alien. The formatting and general layout of the book makes the initial read a pleasant experience. A consequence of this design choice however is that a lot pages in the core rules have only a short paragraph or two of information on them, leading to a lot page hopping or heavy use of control+f when trying to find information mid session. The black background on all the pages makes copying/printing tables from the book difficult. It’s a shame because there are a lot of helpful tables that would be handy to make copies to pass around the table. To Free League’s credit, they have since made some of the material printer-friendly, but that is limited mostly to maps and character sheets, mostly.

In the Alien RPG, players take on the roles of scientists, colonists, space truckers, company reps, or colonial marines in the retro-futuristic sci-fi horror setting that is the Alien universe. The game divides itself into two modes of play, Cinematic and Campaign play. In short, Cinematic play is equivalent to one-shot or short adventures with pre-generated characters and Campaign play is a more traditional RPG experience where players make characters and play through a story over the course of many sessions.

Characters in Alien RPG are comprised of 4 attributes, Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, each attribute has 3 associated skills with it (12 total). Each character also has a career, talents, a personal agenda, and a signature item. In cinematic mode, pre-generated characters come with personal agendas for each of the scenario’s acts but in campaign mode, players and Game Mothers will have to collaborate to come up with agendas that fit in with the campaign. Lastly, whether you are playing campaign mode or cinematic mode; each character has a buddy and rival PC.

The Buddy/Rival system introduces ties and conflict between PCs during game play. There is a blurb discussing PvP and what GM’s should do if in the event things escalate at the table. In my time playing this game I’m happy to report that that has not been issue for the groups I have run for. Being upfront about this aspect of the game with your players sets the expectations and boundaries up early. The Buddy/Rival system has been a fun way to encourage role playing amongst the players to the point to where I may start using it in other systems I play.

Alien RPG uses a d6 system for determining success and failure but adds a unique twist. Included in the Starter box are two sets custom 6-sided dice, one to represent what the game calls base dice, the other—which feature the iconic face-hugger in the one’s spot—are Stress dice. While cool looking, I’m not a fan of custom dice. Thankfully however, players can use any two sets of d6 provided there is an easy way to tell them apart. Making a skill roll is as simple as adding your skill value and the skills associated attribute together and rolling that many base dice along a number of stress dice equaling your current stress level.Success is determined by rolling a 6 on any dice but rolling a 1 on a stress dice can cause a player to panic, more on that later. If a player rolls more a single 6 or in the case of an opposed roll more success than their opponent, the extra successes can be spent on stunts, which provide extra benefits like additional damage or bonuses to future rolls. The stunts—much like the talents which I’ll discuss later—range from feeling lackluster to game altering. I hope in future releases we can see the list of stunt options refactored and expanded upon in future releases.

When a player rolls a 1 on a stress, they then need to a panic roll. To do this you roll a single d6 and add your current stress to the result and consult the panic table. At the lower ends of the spectrum characters will only suffer minor setbacks, but the more stress they have when they panic results in something far worse.

Stress waxes and wanes throughout the course of game play, and players can add stress voluntarily for a chance to re-roll or ‘push’ a roll. The stress mechanic is what makes Alien stand-out from other horror TTRPGs like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. The double-edge sword nature of it makes riding a fine line between keeping your cool and freaking out at the wrong moment a tense and thrilling experience. In my talks with my players and other fellow Game Mothers, many praised the stress mechanic for it’s contribution to the game and I couldn’t agree more. It’s a refreshing change for a horror RPG lover like myself.

The Core rules features sections detailing the 12 skills and various talents in the game. Explanations are straight-forward and the offered examples are helpful for those new to TTRPGs. Talents are akin to feats from DnD in that they are minor abilities that can give characters a small edge in certain situations. Each Career has a small pool of Talents they can choose from but during campaign play, characters will have gain experience which can be spent to gain new talents or increase one of their skills. Talents range power range from decent abilities like a boost to a future skill roll to pretty absurd like ignoring all ones on stress dice for a roll once per session. In cinematic mode it’s likely to be a nonissue but I could issues arising in campaign mode when a player has earned a couple of talents.

Careers feature a key attribute and a short list of skills that give each career their own mechanical edge over the others and a few lists of examples agenda, signature items, looks for your character, and a list of starting gear to choose from and that’s about it. The core rule book has 9 careers on offer ranging from colonial marine to a kid to a scientist. The tables offered in each of the careers are...fine… I wish there was more options in each of the tables. I appreciate how easy it is to quickly create characters in Alien, I just wish there was more of it.

Players also have the option to play as an Android character which operate similar to human characters but do have some differences. One, Androids get increased attribute scores and second Androids cannot gain stress. Android characters are an interesting inclusion in the Alien RPG. Androids in the Alien franchise have a tendency to stab their group in back and it can be fun to lean into that. To do that however you need to keep your Android nature hidden from the other players which you can’t really do if you’re the only one at the table not rolling stress die or another player looks at your character sheet for a little too long. Creative GMs can come up with a solution that works for their group but I wish the rules offered some suggestions on how hide their identity if they wish.

The next section I want to discuss details the gear players may have throughout their adventures. Gear in Alien RPG has a couple of rules attached to them to aid in the atmosphere the game is going for. Firstly, all items have some amount of what the game dubs ‘encumbrance’ value attached to them. A character can carry a number of regular-sized items equal to double their strength. A regular item weighing around a few kilos. The game divides items into Heavy, Light, and Tiny items with tiny items being things the player stuff in a back pocket, like a key-card or handkerchief. The rules emphasize that characters have ONLY the gear listed on their character sheet, so GM’s will want to stress that to their players prior, and during game play. Making the players keep track of where their weapons are creates frantic player in game.

The other major rule when it comes to equipment is the concept of consumables. In Alien, the players must keep track of their air, food, water, and electric power during game play. When the situation calls for it, the GM will have players make a supply roll. To do this, a player rolls a number of stress dice equal the corresponding supplies rating and for each 1 rolled, would decrease their supply of that thing by 1. If I had 4 food and my GM said make a supply roll, I’d roll 4 stress dice and fish out each one. Let’s say I rolled two 1’s (gross), my food supply rating would decrease by 2. Once you’re out of a supply, well, you don’t want to know what happens. General tip for GM’s, when you’re having the players track their supplies, make sure you’re tracking water and air more often than food/power as those tend the most common things players forget about. This type of game is all about putting your players into tough situations and seeing what creative solutions they come up with to solve the problem at hand. This mechanic really helps to sell the survival horror aspect of the Alien RPG in a way that in my experience doesn’t bog down the game play in the slightest.

Let’s now turn our attention to Stealth and Combat. Alien RPG measures time into three units: Rounds, Turns, and Shifts. Rounds are used primarily in combat and anywhere from 5 to maybe 15 seconds. Turns range from 5-10 minutes are primarily used during Stealth mode. Lastly, Shifts are 5-10 hours and are used during down time and recovery.

Stealth mode is the mode I think best captures the heart and sole of the Alien franchise. Enemies lurk in the shadows, stalking the players or patrolling the dark corridors and vents, and the players make use of the iconic motion tracker to find their pursuer. As the GM, this is where you get to prowl alongside the players and build up tension as the players frenetically search everywhere for signs of movement. During this time enemies are considered to be in one of two modes, Active or Passive. Active enemies are well, active, and passive enemies are enemies that can be ambushed by plucky characters. Players can conversely attempt to sneak past enemies rolling Mobility skill vs the enemies Observation skill. Free League creates stunning high quality maps for all their published adventures and I believe this is why. Without a map for the players and a second for the GM, keeping (motion) track of all the stuff on the map is nigh impossible. This game I’d argue requires the use of maps to have a fun time, and I think the designers agreed by providing gorgeous high-quality maps in each of the published scenarios and Starter set. However you decide to play, there will come a time where the players mettle is tested in combat.

Like in pretty much every other system, Alien uses a form of initiative to determine turn order in combat. In Alien, a deck of ten cards is shuffled and dealt to all involved parties. I find this to be a strange way of resolving turn order for a couple of reasons. Reason number one being the arbitrary cap on number of combatants in combat and reason number two is that many Xenomorph types draw multiple initiative cards, further restricting the number of combatants. In most situations it is likely to never come up as an issue, but I can’t help but ask why it was done this way. Why not use a characters Mobility to determine turn order or make a roll or something. It’s not a bad system per se, but I would have preferred a different system that could be scaled to handle large amounts of combatants. Players have the option to be Colonial Marines after all.

Once in combat, players have one fast action and one slow action they can perform each round. The book provides a set of tables for each type of action which will cover practically anything players may want to do during their turn. There is also a section going over movement in combat. The mechanics for combat are fairly straight-forward. Sneak Attacks and Ambushes are possible by making an Mobility vs Observation roll, creating the opportunity to strike. In close combat, combatants have the ability to block incoming damage by using a fast action and rolling close combat. Each success allowing you to decrease damage or potentially disarm or counterattack. The rules also go over common combat maneuvers such as grapples, shoves, and retreats. Ranged Combat works a bit differently, rather than blocking, players have to preemptively take cover from incoming fire. There are also rules for taking aim, full auto fire, overwatch, and the rules for reloading. Any time a player rolls a 1 on a stress die while firing a weapon, they have emptied their magazine and must reload in addition to making their panic roll. Reloading costs a slow action to perform.

Damage in combat occurs when the amount of damage from an attack or hazard is not blocked and not soaked by armor. If a combatant is wearing armor, they roll a number of dice equal the the armors armor rating and for each success, they block 1 point of damage. A PC starts with health equal to their strength score and when a player reaches 0, they enter a broken state and must roll for a critical injury and consult the table. Injuries range from being stunned and winded to Impaled and Disemboweled. Broken characters are defenseless and are subject to coup de grace, which can kill them outright as well provided the attackers fails an empathy roll. Medical Aid can be used to in combat to pull a character out of the broken state. I like this system a lot as it gives players a fighting chance and creates great story moments when they do finally perish.

The combat section also goes over Hazards and conditions PCs may experience in their adventures along with general expectations for synthetic and xenomorph enemies. It’s a nice section that helps to prepare players for the B.S. the GM is likely to throw at them. Lastly in this section are a few blurbs about Vehicles in combat. These rules are intended to surface type vehicles like tanks, rovers, boats, and non-space aerial vehicles. Damage works a bit differently, but ultimately boils down to using different skills and consulting a component damage table rather than the critical injury table used for players. I haven’t used any of the rules for vehicle combat yet so I can’t comment on those yet but the Hazards and Conditions rules are pretty run of the mill. Gms will want to utilize them to further torment their player characters.

The last section before heading into Game Mother territory expands on life in the world of Alien. The section begins by detailing FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, it’s effects on characters, the major regions of the galaxy players can reach thanks to this technology, and what life is like out on the Frontier. The chapter spends a few pages discussing space stations and colonizing deep space, and the lengths corporations will go to in order to achieve their goals. The chapter then shifts gears a bit and talks about the societal and economic structures of the galaxy such as money/currency, religion, media, and law enforcement.

The rest (and bulk) of this chapter is dedicated to space ships, their in-game mechanics, and space battles. Yes. Space battles. Combat in space works differently than when on ground. Crew members will fall into one of five roles or ‘positions’: Captain, Sensor Operator, Pilot, Gunners, and Engineers. Each position has unique actions they can perform during the different phases of combat. To enter combat with another ship, you must first detect it and get in range. Once in range Initiative is drawn per ship and ships enter turn order. Each turn in space combat consists of four phases: The Sensor phase, The Pilot phase, The Gunner phase, and lastly the Engineer phase. During each phase, the Captain gives orders to active crew members which can provide bonuses to active crew and crew members will perform actions that may or may not align with their captain’s orders. The system is well fleshed out, even providing a second panic table to consult during space combat. The book also provides a two-page example to clear up any confusion. I have yet to try out space combat but I very eager to do so. Hopefully Free League will create a scenario that showcases the mechanic front and center someday. (wink)

The second half—nearly 200 pages—is dedicated to the Game Mother. There is a section that provides general tips for running Alien games that I highly recommend any potential GM read. The tips on Campaign play I found to be insightful. There’s a section detailing the various governments and corporations, a section detailing various star systems and notable planets, a section about the different Alien species they may encounter.

A good chunk of the book focuses on helping GM’s come up with adventures of their own. The provides an absolute ton of tables, encounters, NPC’s, jobs for the players, hell it even has an example space station with a crew and list of scenario hooks/events that GM’s can throw at their players. I know it seems like I’m glossing over the second half of the book but there is a lot of great stuff here for GM’s to chew through that detailing it all would be a disservice.

The core rule book includes a mini-scenario titled ‘Hope’s Last Day’ which sees the players playing out the events of Hadley’s Hope before Aliens. The Starter set includes a full scenario called Chariot of the Gods. The adventure in the core book feels like fan service, and it is, but it’s nonetheless a fun way to learn the rules. Chariot of the Gods is beyond the scope of this review but is a great scenario in its own right.

Alien RPG is a great game. It’s simple yet elegant mechanics lead itself to a great night of fun around the table. I highly recommend you give this game a shot!